7.9.11 Hail Mary Mallon interview with Spectrum Culture

While on tour, the members of Hail Mary Mallon (Aesop Rock, Rob Sonic, DJ Big Wiz) sat down with Spectrum Culture and gave an in depth interview on the group, their new release Are You Gonna Eat That?, their unique sound, and more!

Spectrum: Aes, the city of New York itself is a big character in a lot of your rhymes. Since you've resituated yourself, have you had to recalibrate your art to take in the differences of San Francisco?

Aesop Rock:I think a lot of the stuff I wrote about New York was because that was my environment. I think it was more my surroundings rather than the fact it was New York. That character is removed from the stories but I live somewhere else now so there is other stuff to absorb. I think with mentioning New York so much it's an example of becoming a product of your environment. Now San Francisco has a totally different vibe and things to offer that doesn't have. It is now a character just because I live there. I am just wondering how it will flavor your work. AR: I don't know. Most of None Shall Pass was written in San Francisco. It's not like I'm coming up with some G-Funk shit now but I do hear that. People are like, "Oh, what's the Cali influence going to do to your music?" It's not the Cali influence, it's just that I'm somewhere different. I'm not going to make a California-style record, I don't think. I think wherever you live it's going to work itself into it. If I lived in Juneau, Alaska then that would be the surroundings that crept into whatever I was writing about. San Francisco is another metropolis but there is also so much exploring I'm still doing out there. I have been there for five years but there is shit there I still don't know about and I'm always discovering new things. That's a cool angle to take. Being somewhere and not knowing where the fuck you are (laughs) and figuring it out over time. A lot of New York stuff was a relationship I built with that town for my whole life.

Spectrum: Rob, how does this new group differ from the Sonic Sum?

Rob Sonic:Oh, tons different! Sonic Sum was like way less hip-hop in the way things came about. The way that thing is, those guys would all get together and make beats and they would hit me. I would then decline or accept and then write the songs. It was all very separate. I feel like the focus on that was more about the music than actually the vocals and we were setting out to do that. Sort of an anti-rap rap record. So that had a lot to do with the production more than anything. We were going for a trip-hop sort of thing. We let the music carry everything, we mixed the vocals lower. It's not really going to be focused on the MC. It's going to be about this body of work as opposed to just one of us in particular. With this we were all working together to create a record that we wanted to do if we ever did a record together.